Future of Fallout, and Other Episodes in Radioactive World-Making

Joseph Masco is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and author of The Theater of Operations: National Security Affect from the Cold War to the War on Terror, also published by Duke University Press, and The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post--Cold War New Mexico.

“With a rare combination of deep empathy and a sense of the fatally surreal, Joseph Masco's eloquent book takes on the planet-sized problems of nuclear war and climate collapse. What, he asks, makes them twins? Technoscientific consumerism, nuclear nationalism, and petrochemical capitalism together have created a populace without a sense of an alternate, survivable future.” - Catherine Lutz, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies, Brown University “The Future of Fallout, and Other Episodes in Radioactive World-Making is an exceptionally creative and astute account of the pasts and presents of the U.S. security state. Readers of Joseph Masco's previous work will find much that is new here, most centrally, his sustained engagement with climate change and climate science(s) and their inseparability from the history of the nuclear bomb. Thought-provoking, innovative, and always attuned to the complex relationships between power and knowledge production, this book provides a refreshing antidote to conventional scholarly discussions of (U.S.) security, and invites us to reflect deeply on our contemporary predicaments while holding out the possibility of thinking and acting otherwise.” - Nadia Abu El-Haj, author of (The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology) "The book is fantastically informed and informative; it is comprehensive in its analysis and it tracks the US flirtation with plutonium-induced annihilation from the earliest days of the Manhattan Project through the early Obama years." - Ryne Clos (Spectrum Culture) "The Future of Fallout provides an incisive view into how the U.S. national security state justified itself and expanded its reach into every aspect of global life. Anyone who has an interest in the history of the Cold War, nuclear politics, or wants to begin thinking about the role of existential threat in contemporary politics should read this book." - Bryan Nakayama (Society and Space) "This book is an indispensable and iconoclastic examination of the post-Hiroshima American myth. Highly recommended. All levels." (Choice) "Written with an acute critical vision . . . it advances contemporary anthropological conversations on toxicity, the environment, and settler-colonialism through its critique of the military-industrial complex." - Sandra Calkins (PoLAR) "The Future of Fallout, and Other Episodes in Radioactive World-Making is a trenchant and much-needed critique of typical security studies and normative forms of security culture in the US, which have for far too long set research agendas and determined funding of scholarship. Considering the current narratives of a new Cold War between the US and China, one can expect the book to become even more relevant in the decades to come." - Maxime Polleri (Anthropological Quarterly)

• Acknowledgments  viiPrologue  11. Age of Fallout  17I. Dreaming Deserts and Death Machines2. 5:29:45 a.m.  453. States of Insecurity  514. Desert Modernism  835. The Billboard Campaign  113II. Bunkers and Psyches6. Rehearsing the End  1277. Life Underground  1378. Atomic Health  1579. End of Ends  179III. Celluloid Nightmares10. Target Audience  19911. The Age of (a) Man  21912. Catastrophe's Apocalypse  23713. Counterinsurgency, The Spook, and Blowback  265IV. After Counterrevolution14. Shaking, Trembling, Shouting  28715. "Active Measures"  30116. Boundless Informant  31917. The Crisis in Crisis  339Epilogue: An Alternate  363"What If"Acknowledgments  371Notes  37References  389Index  415